The Season Invariant Professional Trader

Mike Bellafiore wrote a great post about the unprofessional summer trader. You can read it here.

Every post that makes me think hard is a heck of a great post in my book. Mike’s post is awesome and obviously his recipes are working wonderfully for his firm.

At Bigger Capital, we are using a different approach to trading. We define our trading space not as humans operating in a 3 dimensional space in New York, facing their terminals all day long. We are after something else.

We are looking for the best brains we can find on a global basis. Our business is to empower these potential traders to create trading systems that scale; systems that do not require the creator to be present in front of a terminal all day long. We incorporate these traders’ insights into our global algorithmic trading system. Their brains become the algorithm and vice versa. Think of it as a virtual augmented brain. We define our trading space this way.

We have no patience for the common wisdoms permeating Wall Street firms. We are agnostic to the life style of our traders. Some of them have full time jobs, one of them is a very busy mother and she works from home.

Our requisite is that they be very smart, creative, and that they contribute in awesome ways to make our vision a reality.

One of our traders is somewhere in Europe on vacation. His algorithm, the output of his neurons, is hard at work without his presence. That is how we want things to operate around here.

If I go kiteboarding this afternoon, I will most likely experience coming down a big wave on a strapless surfboard, with the kite high in the sky. At that precise moment I will be experiencing ultimate flow; the balance between water, air, speed, me, transcendence, and so forth. I become one with nature and away from the markets I often stumble on some wonderful investing and trading insights. These activities also define who we are as traders.

Thoughts?

Written by Michael Bigger. Follow me on Twitter and StockTwits.

Comments

[Eric Gong]

Michael,

Much like how your activities define you as an algo trader, certain activities define discretionary traders. As Mike Bellafiore wrote about in his blog post it is that of a trader sitting in their seat.

I responded on his blog "I truly do believe that I have value as a discretionary trader and there is an edge in the market that only I can execute. If not, why am I a discretionary trader in the first place?"

Perhaps this is the segway into many of us becoming algo traders or it could motivate some of us to sharpen our edge as discretionary traders. Why would you squeeze juice out of a lemon with your hands if a machine could do it better? If you could do it better than a machine then show your value by being in your seat.

[Michael Bigger]

Well said. They are different strategies. No right, no wrong. NYC real estate is expensive, so I guess it is important to have your butt glued to your chair. I have done that BTW and I worked my ass off. Now I prefer to design scaling system than fixating on the screen. I can leverage my skills better...and I am a lousy day trader. ;-)